At the 78th year of his life, after a long illness, the famous sports journalist, as well as television and radio commentator Georgy Sarkisyants died in the Botkin hospital, Interfax reports.

Sarkisyants began working at the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company in 1959. His name was associated with Soviet sports for several decades; with him, the audience in our country worried about the performances of domestic athletes at the largest international tournaments - the World and European Championships, the Olympic Games. In addition to working as a sports news announcer within the framework of the “Time” program, Sarkisyants also hosted thematic programs “Goals, Points, Seconds”, as well as “Football Review” together with Nikolai Ozerov and Vladimir Pereturin.

It is interesting that Sarkisyants could well have become first a professional singer and then a diplomat. He entered journalism after the merger of two universities - the Institute of Oriental Studies and MGIMO , where he initially studied. As a result, after graduating from the journalism department of Leningrad State University, he, according to him, together with Jan Sparre, became the first sports commentator on Soviet television.

His first serious authorial work on television was a program dedicated to the results of the 1959 football season, in which Mikhail Yakushin , Konstantin Beskov , who was still starting his coaching career, and another commentator, Vadim Sinyavsky, took part. Besides football, Sarkisyants said his favorite sports to work in were boxing (he did it for 10 years) and figure skating.

Recently, Sarkisyants, who celebrated his 40th anniversary as a sports commentator in 1999, could be heard on the Eurosport-Russia channel. In one of the conversations, he told how he managed to interview Charlie Chaplin , how Marshal Zhukov trusted him. Well, he called his work on “Football Review” his achievement in sports.

Sarkisyants is the first sports commentator to receive the title of Honored Worker of Culture of Russia.

Georgy Sarkisyants died - Gazeta.Ru